It took a while but…Flipboard finally debuts on Android

Two years after launching on the iPad and six months after coming to the iPhone, the hugely popular Flipboard news and social media app has finally arrived on Android phones as well as the Nook and Kindle Fire tablets. There’s currently no word on a roll out for other Android-powered tablets, however.

Flipboard allows users to ‘flip’ through news stories presented in an attractive magazine-style format built from your chosen news feeds. Easy to use and with a beautiful interface, the app has long been a big hit iOS users, and was even chosen by Apple as its App of the Year in 2010.

In a statement issued late Thursday, Flipboard said its app would be bundled with Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S3, and will also be available in the Google Play Android app store from Friday.

Flipboard also announced it had incorporated Google+ and YouTube into the app. “Now, anyone can add their Google+ account to Flipboard and see stories in their stream, updates from people in their Circles, and posts from pages they subscribe to,” the Palo Alto company said in its statement.

By adding YouTube, readers will now be able to watch videos from people they follow and channels they subscribe to, as well as view, comment, like, share and subscribe to new people or channels.

New localized editions of the app are also being rolled out, with Germany, Korea, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands all getting their own tailored versions. Localized editions are already available for China, Japan, France and English-speaking countries.

“People are amazed by all the things they can see on Flipboard, and often the most personal and interesting stories come from friends,” Flipboard CEO Mike McCue said in the statement. “Today we have over 2000 featured content partners from around the world and, now with the addition of Google+ and YouTube, we have all of the popular social networks for our readers to sit back and enjoy.”

The last really big iOS-only app to cross the great divide to the Android platform was Instagram back in April, a move that seemed to shock and even annoy many iOS users. With the arrival of this latest app heavyweight, the only thing that really surprises us is the amount of time it took.